Facebook knows who you are and who your friends are. Now it wants to find out where you are.

Not that this should necessarily freak you out, analysts say. Why, it might even get you a coupon for a free latte!

That’s the upshot of the new “Facebook Connect for the iPhone” initiative unveiled recently at SXSW 2009, which the digerati recognize as the call letters of the ever trendy South By Southwest tech-music-film hoedown in Austin. Facebook, Google and Digg all hosted rocking parties, I’m told.

Facebook Connect was first introduced by the Palo Alto-based social networking leader in December to enable users to interact more easily with a selection of other people on major Web destinations, lending more social dimension to those sites. Now some applications on Apple’s iPhone will become “more social,” analysts say, while Facebook will benefit from iPhone’s “location awareness” and more “real-time” functionality. All of which should serve the greater cause of “social advertising.”

“Soon you’re going to see not only what your friends are doing, but where they are doing it,” said Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research.

Pelago Chief Executive Jeff Holden agrees. Pelago’s app, called Whrrl, was among those spotlighted in the release of Facebook Connect for the iPhone. Whrrl, initially perceived as a “friend-finding” app akin to Loopt and Brightkite, has launched a new “first-of-its-kind” version aimed at promoting “collaborative storytelling” by enabling users to share photos, videos and “microblogs,” Holden said.

While Twitter creates ephemeral data, Holden said, stories created through Whrrl would ” live on and become valuable as an artifact of what you have been doing in your life.”

The other iPhone apps now connected to Facebook seem less lofty. These include the games ”Agency Wars,” ”Binary Game,” ”iBowl,” ”Live Poker” and ”Tap Tap Revenge 2.” The Urban Spoon app, meanwhile, can help with restaurant reviews and recommendations.

“Facebook Connect is an accelerant, because you have an existing social ecosystem which you can tap now,” Holden explained. “It just accelerates everybody.”

Valdes credited Mark Zuckerberg’s startup with “continuing to move the platform forward — maintaining momentum through innovation.” As for the many Facebook users complaining about the redesign, Valdes figures they’ll get over it. Complaints themselves are a reminder of how fond users have become of Facebook.

The deeper interaction between Facebook and smart-phone apps can also help deliver “social advertising,” analysts say.

Say you’ve identified yourself as a Facebook “fan” of Starbucks, hoping for good deals on caffeine. When you discover that a friend happens to be in the neighborhood, Owyang explained, you might well suggest a meeting at Starbucks — and cash in a two-for-one offer.

Only early adopters might notice an impact soon, but the deeper Facebook-iPhone integration underscores a trend of convergence on the Web that also has potential for trouble from identify thieves. “Those of us who are older and more experienced can get a bit paranoid,” Valdes said. “Younger people are not necessarily as paranoid as they should be.”

PubMatic scores another round: PubMatic, a Palo Alto ad company that says it works with more than 5,500 online publishers, announced that it had secured second-round funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nexus India Capital and Helion Ventures.

The size of the funding was not announced. The company said it would use the money as a catalyst for global expansion of a product called PubMatic Premier, “which is designed specifically to increase the revenue that large media companies make from online ad networks while also protecting media companies’ brands.”

The California Highway Patrol has released a video of one of its helicopter crews performing a dramatic rescue of two British men who were stranded on the edge of a massive granite cliff overlooking Yosemite Valley as a major snow storm was nearing.

A researcher at a university in the U.K. who came up with a mathematical equation declaring the third Monday in January as "the most depressing day of the year." A mental health advocate has debunked that theory.